With the influx of digital compression schemes, digital media copiers, digital playing devices, and the Internet, it has become relatively simple to illegally copy and distribute digital content. Therefore, content providers want to allow only the person who bought content to access (i.e. play, copy or record) that content. One way to do this is to provide content that contains an ID, and lock the ID to the consumer, the rendering device or the storage unit. However, these existing solutions of how to use the ID produce unreasonable burdens for consumers.
One existing solution, known as user-binding, requires a person to carry an ID-card and/or remember a personal identification number (PIN) to access the content, similar to the way bank ATM machines work. The consumer has accepted this solution in order to access money in the bank, a situation where security is an advantage to the consumer too. However, it is doubtful that consumers will accept this requirement to access content, for example, play audio on a car stereo. In addition, when a group of people are sharing content, such as music, the process of each person having to scan a card before listening to their music is obtrusive. Finally, this solution requires data that links the ID to the user, so PINs and/or ID-cards can be produced. This data means the user's privacy has been compromised.
Another existing solution restricts playing of the content to one device, known as player-binding. This solution means your friend's music will not play in your car stereo, neither will your movie play at his house. This solution is not only inconvenient to the consumer, but also reduces the sale of content since many people buy content after playing or viewing it with their friends.
A final solution links the content to the storage unit, known as media-binding. The storage unit includes but is not limited to a magnetic hard drive, optical disk or electronic memory. This solution becomes cumbersome when the content should be allowed to move between different storage unit types. For example, a user, Joe, may want to play his audio from his computer's hard drive over his home stereo, or have the audio in his car or on a jog as portable electronic memory. However, with this media-binding solution, this audio can only be played in one place, and to move it from Joe's stereo to his car, he has to remember to where it was “checked out”, otherwise, piracy cannot be controlled. Importantly, he can't just listen to it from each place as desirable to the consumer.